Friday Food: Carp (Yes, They're Edible)

Friday 

Short version: Leftover shepherd's pie, scrambled eggs, leftover mashed potatoes with cheese

Long version: I was extremely tired after our long day of fishing, and we got home too late to do anything with the two carp we caught. So it was leftovers for the kids (who are not yet old enough that they have to forgo meat on Fridays during Lent), and scrambled eggs and mashed potatoes for the adults

Saturday

Short version: Fried carp, macaroni with pesto, raw green beans

Long version: A. took care of preparing the fish from the day before. It's always harder than you'd think to cut the head off of big fish.

When you start with a cleaver and a hammer, you know it's serious.

He followed a Polish recipe he found online that called for "dry marinating" it with onion. He used both 

onion and green garlic. 

Slightly more photogenic. If you ignore that fish head there. (Saved at the explicit request of Poppy, who wanted to eat the eyeball. Gross.)

Then it was dredged in egg and flour (he used masa) and fried. I think there was some lemon juice in there somewhere, too.

Carp actually taste good, but they have a LOT of tiny bones. The kids were very careful eating it, but they did find it a bit tedious.

The school cook had given me a ton of leftover macaroni and cheese on Wednesday. Well, not a literal ton, but at least three pounds. Unfortunately, it tasted kind of . . . odd. Almost like she had added green chile to it, which is entirely possible.

None of the kids liked it with the cheese sauce, so I rinsed that off as best I could and then heated up the plain macaroni with pesto and Parmesan. Unfortunately, enough of the cheese sauce remained inside the macaroni that two of four kids could still taste it and didn't like it. The other two ate it, though.

Sunday

Short version: Carp chowder*, fresh garlic rolls, Lindt truffles

Long version: A. used the rest of the carp, plus the onions and green garlic from the marinade to a make a chowder. There was also milk, butter, and potatoes, and it actually turned out really good. Better than the fried fish, I thought.

I was baking bread, so I pulled off a piece of dough for each child and made mini-garlic breads that ended up being pretty crusty rolls. Perfect with soup.

Calvin had some idea for a dessert that involved melting chocolate chips and then freezing it in ice cube trays. I wasn't sure what he was going for exactly, but I figured he wouldn't object to Lindt truffles. I had bought them for Easter baskets, and then my mother sent a whole bunch of chocolate for the baskets, so I figured we could have the truffles a bit early.

There were no complaints.

Monday

Short version: Extra shepherd's pie, bread and butter

Long version: I had an entire 13"x 9" pan of shepherd's pie left from when I made it on Thursday. I heated that up in the oven after work, and was very glad I didn't have to cook anything else.

The children finished up with the bread and butter.

Pause for a photo!

Sheep and shadows at sunrise.

Tuesday

Short version: Creamy green chile stew, bread and butter, cocoa

Long version: I needed to make more green chile sauce, so I did that, and then I used some of it to make the stew.

The bread and butter and cocoa were the consolation prizes for the stew. No one is ever very excited to see stew on the table. I'm seriously considering forgoing stew meat altogether next time we have a whole cow butchered and just getting it all as ground beef.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftovers as tacos, Dad's chile

Long version: I had cooked a chuck roast on Sunday just to have the meat on hand, and that's what I used for the tacos. I diced the beef, then heated it up with a bit of the leftover stew liquid. All the meat, potatoes, and carrots had been eaten from the stew, so it was really just a sauce left. 

The chile was A.'s pigs' foot chile. This was the last frozen container of it. 

And then I think the children had some slices of bread after dinner, and maybe some bowls of yogurt with maple syrup. I don't know. I was lying down so I could summon the energy to make crispy rice treats for the next day's spring party in the elementary school.

Thursday

Short version: Sausage-y meatloaf, biscuits, cucumber slices, pureed calabaza (freezer)

Long version: It had been awhile since I had added some pork sausage to the meatloaf mixture, but it does make it better. Particularly because the fat in the sausage balances out the leanness of our ground beef.

I actually made a slurry of the meatloaf additions (bread crumbs, eggs, barbecue sauce, salt, pepper, onion powder) Wednesday night and stored that in a jar in the refrigerator so that in the morning all I had to do was mix it with the thawed meat and form the loaves.

I did this because I was substituting for a teacher and so would not be home to cook during the day. Also Calvin's friend was coming after school and staying for dinner. He's a very polite boy, and I'm sure he would eat anything I gave him without comment, but I do like to make some effort when we have a guest.

The biscuits were just the baking powder biscuit recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook that I memorized about twenty years ago and that is apparently indelibly engraved on my brain. Except I use more butter. Because they're better that way.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

* This reminded both A. and me of the time the MiL gathered up a bunch of heads and carcasses from a mess of fish A. caught in the lake to make a fish soup. Coincidentally, today is the MiL's birthday. Happy birthday, MiL! You would have liked this chowder.